1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to systems and processes for facilitating the provision of tax return preparation services. In other aspects, the invention relates to systems and processes to facilitate the outsourcing of tax return preparation services and other types of financial services.
2. Description of Background Information
Many accounting firms wish to preserve and grow market share in the tax return preparation business and to maximize their profit margin for such services. To do this, they must accommodate their clients in such areas as cost, responsiveness, and quality, while minimizing their own costs to preserve the accounting firm's profit.
Non-accounting industries such as banking and insurance have been outsourcing various data processing tasks to India. Suggestions have been made to accounting firms to outsource tax return preparation services to India, to thereby reduce the per-return labor cost experienced by the accounting firm. There is a need for systems and methods to facilitate such outsourcing.